Look Don’t Smell: Yellowstone’s Thermal Pools Are Pungently Pretty

Photographer Dave Reichert and his daughter went to Yellowstone National Park to see the wolves, but when the packs of Canis lupus failed to show, Reichert’s attentions turned to the more reliable bubbling thermal pits for which Yellowstone is famous.

“The colors took me by surprise,” says Reichert. “I’d seen plenty of pictures of Yellowstone, but I was totally unprepared for the variety and intensity of color.”

Reichert’s series Stinking Holes in the Ground is a straight-shot celebration of nature’s patterns and tones. Anyone who’s visited the pools is aware of both the beauty and the smell, but even veterans can appreciate the photos’ meditative effect.

Yellowstone’s thermal pools and mudpots are accessed via raised walkways, often just inches above the water’s surface, allowing Reichert to get right over the hyper-color dance of liquid and minerals.

“You’re right there in the thick of it: improbably lurid, bubbling fields of algae and muck,” says Reichert.

As much as the natural show is a treat for the eyes, it can abuse the nose. Hydrogen sulfide, which has the odor of rotten eggs, rises deep from within the Earth and pervades at the hot springs and mudpots.

“When the wind is in the right (wrong?) direction, the smell can be overpowering,” Reichert told WIRED via email. He describes himself as an environmentalist by nature and lives in the Santa Fe National Forest with his family, a mile from their nearest neighbor.

“Surrounded by a forest, and sharing our property with all sorts of wildlife, it’s only natural that we would be concerned with the health and preservation of the environment,” says Reichert.

Prior to his move to New Mexico, Reichert spent his younger days in New York City. When he left the bustle of the Big Apple in the early ’80s he also left behind his darkroom. What followed was a two-decade hiatus from producing photographs for public audiences.

The birth of a daughter in 1998 and the awesome Western landscapes reignited Reichert’s latent passion. In 2004, Reichert got his first digicam and a couple of years later bought a camera that accommodates his old lenses at the field of view for which they were designed. With old skills he sees the world with fresh eyes.

“My photography is for me. It’s my way of sorting things out. If it works for others, that’s just icing on the cake,” he says.